[Oe List ...] 1/26/2023, Progressing Spirit: Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.: Friendship, Companionship, Grief, Love; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Jan 26 07:16:04 PST 2023
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Friendship, Companionship, Grief, Love
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| Essay by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.
January 26, 2023I lost a very dear friend the day after Christmas.
I look, out of habit, out of longing, out of love, really, but he is not there. It is as if his singular space – the very soft shape of kindness within my world – has been cut out.
Years it took for him to allow me to hold his very tender paws. I began by gently stroking his front legs. Maybe an inch or two. Slowly moving downward. Then we looked into each other’s eyes as I cradled his muzzle and assured him of my love. His head would relax and sit heavily upon my hands. The moment, one day, arose when his paws were in my hands. Afterwards, he would sit on his haunches and place his front paws upon my thighs as I read, and lay his head upon those relaxed paws.
Friendship is birthed in a thousand small and significant acts of trust. I recently listened to Brandon McMillan – a dog-trainer extraordinaire – who equated bonding with trust. I believe he is right. As we bond through our touch, our gaze, our voice, our words, trust is in gestation and slowly emerging as the reality of friendship.
Many years ago, I wrote a book, I Have Called You Friends. My concern was correcting the parental paradigm of family systems theory as it was being applied to leadership in the church. I found in the Johannine gospel an appreciation of friendship as the core value defining our relationship with Holy Mystery as well as one another. What I did not have in mind or heart was our relationship with the dearest friendships we often experience: our four-footed companions.
Companionship
We adopted Jackson, a Standard Poodle, about a year after the death of his great uncle, Ciaran. Before that, our lives had been filled with the brother and sister act of the black Labrador/Beagle mutts, Jethro & Ethel, whom we picked from a grocery cart in front of the local drug store.
As I child, Lady was our family’s first dog – a stray puppy we discovered on the street in our subdivision. Next was Midnight. I don’t remember how she came into our lives. Then I was off to college. These dogs were my pals, whose presence was unreflected upon and taken for granted.
Our daughter and I chose Jackson, a year and a half old (a young adolescenct), not without some trepidation on my part. I had always begun with a pup. But here was a dog with some life experience already under his belt. Would we ever bond, or would he forever yearn for his home life – his family of origin?
I have a picture taken not long after his arrival where his muzzle is resting upon the front porch rail, seeming to gaze off into the distance, looking a tad wan and perhaps wondering in what world he had just landed. His heart, I feel, was sad. He didn’t trust us, or me. His friends who companioned him throughout the day were now forever lost. He had been plucked up, whisked away, and plopped down into a new universe of daily life.
We once thought that grieving, longing, loving, mourning, were all the province of humans. But we are now much wiser. Mammals grieve and even exhibit ritualistic behavior over the loss of ones they have nurtured, bonded with, trusted, and loved.
Meister Eckhart recognized that every creature is a word of Holy Mystery. Every being is an expression of Being, of Word become flesh. Every creature is a soul, which simply and significantly means they are a particular incarnation, embodiment, of Being. They are a living invitation to learn to listen and love – to discover friendship.
Somewhere along the way during those early months with Jackson, I listened to a radio interview, where the speaker said that the actual words we use with dogs make a difference. It is not just our inflection that impacts their furry being. I love you. You are beautiful. You are amazing. Words, such as these, shape the sounds uttered from the depth of our soul and land upon others, shaping the space between us and within us. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson points out that homo sapiens and canines have evolved together. Our beings have been intertwined for hundreds of thousands of years. We are who we are in and through each other. Of course, words matter.
And so, I began to whisper into Jackson’s ears as we paused during a walk, as he began to freely return to me every few moments from his rambling along a Northwoods trail, as he sat beside me on the floor, and sleeping in my lap – I love you. You are beautiful.
Weeks, months, years, passed, and it came to be that whenever I looked down, as I moved from room to room within our home, my companion was there. Ready with a smile. With eyes open and soft and kind and eager. Often – not often enough – I would pause in the midst of a chore, kneel down, gently hold and stroke his soft ears, bring my face close to his nose (often tenderly touching tip-to-tip), receiving a few very special kisses, and whisper, I love you.
Maybe it was after our 1,000th walk. Maybe it was during our sacred stomps through the forest trails, when he was free from leash and able to explode and stride effortlessly like a deer floating above the path. Maybe it was while looking out upon the duck pond, pausing with my hand upon his back as he panted with tongue hanging out in sheer rapture of being alive.
We were fast friends. Wherever I went, if possible, so did he. Sitting in the back seat he would dutifully watch me enter the store and lead me back into the car with his eyes. He didn’t care what I got. We were together. He was at rest in my presence, and I rested in his. His eyes spoke to me of trust and adoration. He had found a place deep in my soul, much deeper than I had ever thought possible.
Grieving and Loving
I had just returned home late in the morning from swimming on Christmas Eve when Jackson, usually eagerly waiting by the door to greet me, appeared quietly by my side as I removed my coat, dragging his right hind leg, as if he had pulled a muscle. He was slumping, eyes sad. As the day wore on, he barely moved and only ate treats. Christmas day he simply stayed put on the couch. We knew something was wrong but couldn’t sense what it was. I cradled and carried him into the bedroom that night. And early next morning we took him immediately to the vet. We thought his spine might be injured or a muscle severely pulled. No. We sat stunned with disbelief as the vet slowly spoke words that began to fade into fog – your dog (our dearest friend) has a huge mass on his liver and fluid throughout his abdomen.
Love is concrete, specific, particular. When I say I love you. I mean you who are there before me, gracing my life with your singular beauty. I appreciate you. I receive you. I wonder about the amazing mystery of you. You are the gift whom I receive in this moment as the face of Holy Mystery. You teach me about the mystery of love and kindness and forgiveness. I discover that love is truly infinite in and through my trust, my bonding, my companionship, with you.
I discovered the depth of my love for Jackson as I wept. As the vet administered the drugs to our friend, we cradled his fading being and whispered I love you, gently holding his face, gazing softly into his eyes, tears falling upon his body and anointing his beauty. He trusted us completely even as he died.
Grief and weeping are gifts of the heart. They are not to be dismissed. We do a disservice to our soul if we seek distraction from our loss and our tears. So we now have a large votive candle, surrounded by pictures of our beloved Jackson, which we light each morning. I hold as sacred this grieving for my friend who taught me patience, sweetness, tenderness, and love. He reminded me of the gift of playing, running, panting, and jumping, as well as lounging and being adored.
There is no creature who cannot teach us of the ways of love. As this new year begins my heart is very sad and yet very full, because of one of whom my soul does say, I have called you friend.~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.
Read online here
About the Author
Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D., an Episcopal Priest, works with students of all backgrounds to awaken to the truth of being holy mystery ceaselessly unfolding, which is to realize our Christ heart. His gentle and compassionate teaching is rooted in wonderment and exploration of the spiritual fecundity of the present moment, drawing upon meditation, body practice, and the enneagram. He has been a student of the Diamond Approach since 2006. He received Jukai from Shoken Winecoff of Ryumonji Soto Zen Buddhist Temple in May, 2004, and has been authorized by Senior Buddhist Teacher, Stephen Snyder, to explore use of the Brahma Viharas within the Christian tradition. Kevin is also an authorized Instructor of Diamond Body Practice and a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. As an Episcopal Priest for almost 30 years, he has helped found the Healing Arts Centers at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish in Portland, Oregon and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Marquette, Michigan. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Awakening as Holy Mystery: Realizing Christ Heart, as well as five previous books, Beyond My Wants, Beyond My Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland, I Have Called You Friends, Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms, and My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By A Reader
“What’s a progressive Christian understanding of things like astrology, tarot cards, or dream-work? Can one be a Christian and engage with those things?”
A: By Rev. Roger Wolsey
Dear Reader,A growing number of people are asking these sorts of questions. I’m especially aware of many young adults and teens who aren’t (and are!) involved in churches, but do dabble with these things – and with quite a few taking them quite seriously. Within Christianity there’s been a teaching that these things are either inferior, or wayward – if not outright wrong, dangerous, sinful, pagan, and/or of the occult. St. John of Damascus wrote, ”Some pagans believe that the stars and the study of the rising and setting of the Sun or Moon guide the destinies of men, and this is what is called 'astrology'. But we Christians know well that the stars indicate rain, drought, humidity, seasonal cycles, winds and all things of this kind, but they are not signals for our life, since we are created free by the Creator and we are factors of our own destiny. We can truly say that the Sun, the Moon and the stars produce various temperaments, habits, predispositions, but nothing can win over our free will." (On the Orthodox Faith, book II, chap. VII – around 730 AD)
However, progressive Christianity freely questions supposedly established Christian traditional teachings – often going back to far earlier perspectives and focuses on what actually works to help humans connect to the Divine and each other, and be at our best. With this in mind, we can remember the story told about magi from the east came to visit the infant Jesus (Matthew chapter 2). They noticed an unusual phenomenon (perhaps a comet, or an unusual planetary alignment) in the night sky looking west. They were likely Zoroastrian priests from Persia. They were warned in a dream not to go back to King Herod, and similarly, Jesus’ father Joseph had a dream warning him to get his family away from Bethlehem ASAP and to do so in a way to avoid King Herod – so they went back to Nazareth travelling far out of the way through Egypt. The Church celebrates how those pagan, gentile magi (the root of magicians) practiced their astrology and imbued meaning in what they saw in the sky – “a new king has been born in the world!” The Church celebrates how Spirit spoke to both the magi and to Joseph through dreams. The Church looks foolish to recognize and honor astrology and dreams during Christmas/Epiphany while rejecting them the rest of the year.
A familiarity of astrology (solar sign, rising sign, lunar sign, Chiron return, etc.) seems to be rather insightful and helpful to many people. And many Hindu families consult astrology as part of how they name their children. It isn’t “just a thing of the past.” When and where a person is born is part of the Human Design modality which some people find quite helpful in life. One doesn’t have to view astrology as “determining our destinies.” One can simply view it as a tool that can offer some insight, but we can hold that tool loosely, and still be primarily people of prayer (which progressive Christians tend to have a wide perspective about as well).
I view tarot as being between helpful and innocuous – perhaps akin to looking at clouds and noticing what shapes you see; or like noticing images in Rorschach ink blots, etc. “I see an elephant. I see an angry father.” What does an elephant mean to you in your life? What does an angry father mean to you?... With this perspective, one simply brings to what they see in the tarot cards they drew – what is already on their mind – or at least in their subconscious mind. Examples, “How am I feeling abundance in life? How am I feeling desolation or defeat? How am I experiencing a death? What challenges and obstacles are in my life?” They invite an inner conversation and some soul searching. The world needs more of that.
I delve into these matters more deeply in “Discovering Fire: Spiritual Practices that Transform Lives” (out in March, 2023, Quoir publishing).
~ Rev. Roger Wolsey
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Roger Wolsey is a United Methodist pastor who resides in Grand Junction, CO. Roger is the author of Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity and blogs for Patheos as The Holy Kiss. Roger serves on the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.Org. Roger served as the Director of the Wesley Foundation campus ministry at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 14 years and has served as pastor of churches in Minnesota, Iowa, and Colorado. He currently serves as the pastor of Fruita United Methodist Church in Colorado and as the “CRM” (Congregational Resource Minister) for the Utah/Western Colorado District of the Mountain Sky Conference. His newest book, “Discovering Fire: Spiritual Practices that Transform Lives” https://www.rogerwolsey.com/author-writer will be out in March 2023. |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
On the Importance of Being Ordinary
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
August 29, 2013Over the past few years, while working on my recent book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, I became fascinated with how the author of John’s gospel develops the characters in his narrative. There are more memorable characters in the Fourth Gospel than anywhere else in the New Testament. The disciple Thomas is simply a name on a list in the other gospels, but in John, he becomes a doubter, placing the term “Doubting Thomas” into our language. John also includes a whole series of other crucial characters about whom none of the other gospels seem to have heard. Among them are Nathaniel, the “Beloved Disciple,” Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman by the well and Lazarus. These characters are so beautifully drawn that they not only become indelible, but their uniqueness raises the possibility that they are more symbolic figures than they are actual people of history. In this gospel, they also appear to represent different kinds of responses to Jesus. When one reads John deeply enough, each character seems to become a personality type whose diversity is sufficient that everyone can identify with one of them. Today I want to lift one of the Johannine characters out of the text and present him to you, my readers, as a possible role model, at least for some of us. His name is Andrew and I call him “The Patron Saint of Ordinary People.”
Before the Fourth Gospel appeared, the only thing the New Testament tells us about Andrew is that he was the brother of Simon Peter, who everywhere in the New Testament, is portrayed as a leader. Andrew was thus one with only reflected status, primarily known by his relationship to another. Quite often in our still patriarchal world, women are known only as the wives of their husbands, and children are sometimes identified only as the son or daughter of a famous parent. This was the role of Andrew. Those whose primary identity is derived from a more famous person are not necessarily the stars, they are rather the ordinary people.
While we continue to live in a culture of heroes, the world actually turns, I believe, on those who are ordinary people. Reading a history of World War II one might get the impression that America fought and won that war with only three soldiers: Eisenhower, MacArthur and Patton. Yet everyone knows that wars are won or lost not by the generals, but by the fighting, bleeding and dying of the foot soldiers, who are normally nameless. Before John’s gospel was written Andrew was a foot soldier, an ordinary person, identified only by his relationship with another. The Fourth Gospel then adds to that scant biography three short but telling stories. In the first chapter of John we are told that Andrew, the ordinary man, brought his brother to Jesus, thus making possible Peter, the extraordinary man. It was Peter, not Andrew, who was destined to become the first leader of the Christian community.
In the sixth chapter of John’s gospel Andrew is the one who brings to Jesus the lad with five loaves and two fish. Given the dimensions of the crowd of thousands that needed to be fed, this gift was hardly a drop in the proverbial bucket. Andrew, however, was one who understood that no person’s gift was so small or insignificant that it could not be used and thus felt that it must be appreciated. The story says that Jesus took this gift and used it to feed the multitude.
In the twelfth chapter of John’s gospel we are told that a group of Greek foreigners come seeking Jesus. This would make them, by Jewish standards, Gentiles, who were unclean, uncircumcised, non-Kosher and non-Torah observing people. It is Andrew, we are told, who becomes their guide, for no task is too insignificant for him to undertake. So through the dark streets of Jerusalem Andrew led them to the place where Jesus was. At that moment John has Jesus announce “My hour has come.” He then says: “Now the Son of Man will be glorified.” When I am lifted up on the cross, Jesus continues, “I will draw all people to me” and then the world will know “I AM,” then the world will know the meaning of God. Once again Andrew is the expeditor. He is always an ordinary person, but because he did the ordinary thing, great things seemed to happen all around him. No one is unqualified for this kind of role. Take a moment to recall a critical turning point in your own journey and remember who it was who stood with you at that moment, the one who might have said just the right word causing you to choose one path over another and you now recognize that your whole life was determined by that decision. Was that critical person not just an ordinary man or woman?
At the risk of being an exhibitionist allow me to relate an intensely personal story that illustrates for me the role of the ordinary person. My father died when I was 12. My mother had not finished the 9th grade in school and thus had little ability to replace my father as our family’s bread winner. We soon fell into rather precarious poverty. For about two years, I was little more than a radically lost, insecure adolescent. Then someone came into my life through no action on my part. My church in Charlotte, North Carolina, chose a new rector. The year was 1946, World War II had come to an end, and the man chosen had just come out of the navy, where he had served as a chaplain on an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific. I do not know the process that enabled him to be chosen, but I do know that this choice determined the course of my life. This man was different from any minister or priest that I had ever known. First, he was only 32 years of age. That fact alone broke my priestly stereotype, for I had never known a priest who wasn’t old. I thought one probably had to be at least 80 to be ordained. Second, he wore white buck shoes. I had never known a priest to wear anything but black. lace-up oxfords. Third, he drove a Ford convertible. I thought priests only drove hearses. Finally, he had a stunningly beautiful wife. I thought clergy wives were dour, wearing only dark brown and navy blue with their hair in a bun at the back of their heads. This woman, however, was dashing and bejeweled. She even smoked cigarettes in a long golden cigarette holder. She was the most sophisticated woman I think I had ever met. I was so deeply drawn to this couple that I volunteered to do anything that enabled me to get closer to them, so I became the only acolyte in my church willing to serve at the 8:00 a.m. communion service. I was not a good acolyte– faithful, but not necessarily competent.
My new rector was on the more catholic side of the Episcopal Church and he believed that no one should receive communion without fasting from midnight on. He worried that a bit of undigested toast might corrupt the body of Christ received at the Eucharist. So I came to that service fasting. At that time in my life, however, I was delivering the Charlotte Observer to about 150 houses each morning. This meant I would rise at 4:30 a.m., go to the corner where my papers were dropped off, fold them so that I could throw them on to the lawns of my subscribers, and, then, with my bicycle basket filled, I would set out to deliver them. I arrived home about 6:45 a.m. in sufficient time to shower, dress and catch a bus to my downtown church to do my acolyte duty at 8:00 a.m. By this hour of the morning, however, I was absolutely famished, but still committed to that fast. In the 1928 Prayer Book liturgy, my church used at that time, there was something called the “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church.” It was two pages long and reminded me of the mercy of God in that it seemed to me to endure forever! Inevitably, before we got through that prayer I began to feel strange, light-headed and very warm. Then I would either faint dead away and have to be carried bodily out of the sanctuary or else I would turn green and throw up leaving my offering at the foot of the altar. I never made it through that prayer. One of the reasons I championed Prayer Book revision in my adult career was to get rid of the “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church.” Despite this weakness in both my flesh and performance as an acolyte, my rector continued to want me to serve and when that 8:00 a.m. worship was over and I had recovered my equilibrium, this man and I would go half a block up the main street of Charlotte to a restaurant, have breakfast together and talk. I do not recall what we talked about, but I do know that in all my adolescent life, this was the only time an adult talked with me. I had many adults who talked to me or at me, but he talked with me. He even listened to my immature ideas; he asked questions to help me clarify my thinking. It was such a simple thing to do, such an ordinary thing, but to this lonely and lost fifteen year old boy, it was powerfully important and life-giving. I adored that man and wanted to be as much like him as I could be. He became the model for my life and I found my vocation to be a priest in my relationship with him.
Was the man a great person? Was he even a great priest? Well, he was to me, but that was not how he was judged by the world. The world saw and judged him to be an ordinary man with ordinary weaknesses. After I left Charlotte to begin my university education he left our church in Charlotte to become the rector of a church in Louisiana. There he fell into an addiction to alcohol. It got so bad that he was finally removed from the priesthood. He died thinking of himself professionally as a failure, but he was a vital person, a change agent to me. The truth is that he was just an ordinary man who simply took the time to talk with a lost teenager. It was something that anybody could have done, but he did it. He was an Andrew.
Most of us will not be generals who win battles or elected officials who will rise to political power. We may not become the chief executive of either a small business or of a great corporation, but we can make a difference, a profound difference in the lives of those around us in ordinary ways just by being sensitive, just by being a friend, just by saying the right word at the right time in the right circumstance. We can all be Andrews, the Patron Saint of ordinary people.~ John Shelby Spong |
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